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Aliya Parashar

class of 2022

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about

Aliya Parashar is an interdisciplinary artist focused within textiles and installation concentrating on gender identity and its intersection to anti-colonial theory. Aliya strives to strike a balance between celebrating femininity and honoring bodies while creating a vision of resistance through garments and fiber production. She works to create a vision of trans beauty and strength which reclaims luxury as a tool for resistance; in doing so sharing stories of ancestry, trauma, and, resilience.

She holds a Bachelor's of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Aliya is currently a MA/MFA candidate at the California College of the Arts.

Aliya’s Thesis

Towards a Transsexual Dwelling in Yantra Studies

Primarily, in Yantra studies, we seldom see the availability for a transsexual reading, regardless of the involvement of trans identities in Hindu mythology. Bodies lie as integral elements in Yantra structures, as often they are based upon, around, or with them in mind. Yantra structures are often interpreted according to the Hindu mythos and tantric philosophy. Embodiment is a crucial element both in metaphysical studies and trans phenomenology; I introduce a transsexual dwelling in the Yantra. In this talk, through the visual analysis of the Vāstupuruṣamaṇḍala, Sri Yantra, a contemporary rendition of a Yantra from my artistic practice, and Sree by P.T. Reddy, I argue that the transsexual body is inherently involved in this reading. There is a trans mythos that dwells in the structure and logic of the Yantra—the transsexual body existing through orientations, transition, and self-reference in a visual rendition. In my argument, I bridge the gap between the Yantra and transsexual body through metaphysics and myth.